Reflections in an octagonal mirror maze

Abstract

Suppose we are given an environment consisting of axisparallel and diagonal line segments with integer endpoints, each of which may be reflective or non-reflective, with integer endpoints, and an initial position for a light ray passing through points of the integer grid. Then in time polynomial in the number of segments and in the number of bits needed to specify the coordinates of the input, we can determine the eventual fate of the reflected ray.